Quality Theorists

Drs. Walter A. Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, and Genichi Taguchi are three leading theorists who have consistently lead the way in helping industry and other organizations establish increasingly higher benchmarks for quality and performance. They are recognized as guideposts for domestic and global business. Their theories and methods have a very real role in today’s language management processes.

Dr. Walter A. Shewhart (1891 - 1967)

Trained as a physicist at the Universities of Illinois and California, Dr. Shewhart joined Western Electric Company in 1918. Western Electric manufactured hardware for Bell Telephone, a company that placed significant importance on the reduction of variation in the manufacturing process. Bell Telephone understood that reactive, continual process-adjustment in response to variation indeed increased variation and thus adversely affected quality.

To address the problem Dr. Shewhart introduced the “Control Chart” as a means of distinguishing between “assignable cause” and “chance cause.” He strongly advocated bringing production processes into “Statistical Control.” In this condition there would be only chance-cause variation and it would be tightly controlled, leading to greater precision in predicting future output, and economically managing the production process. Dr. Shewhart is credited with introducing the respected quality tool – Plan, Do, Study, Act. It is a virtual never-ending process and is key for achieving “transformation.”

Dr. Shewhart is considered by many to be the father of contemporary quality control. His work had a profound impact upon the work of renowned quality theorist, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who became a strong proponent of Dr. Shewhart’s methods of production control and improvement.

W. Edwards Deming (1900 – 1993)

Dr. W. Edwards Deming embarked upon his renowned career as a quality theorist following his graduation from the University of Wyoming with a BS degree in electrical engineering. He subsequently earned graduate degrees in mathematics and mathematical physics.

Dr. Deming is perhaps best known for his work in Japan, which commenced in 1950, and created a revolution in quality and economic production. Japanese manufacturers created in his honor the annual Deming Prize. The prize was instituted by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers and is awarded each year in Japan to a statistician for contributions to statistical theory. The Deming prize for application is awarded to a company for improved use of statistical theory in organization, consumer research, design of product and production.

His quality theories have reached a multitude of organizations including railways, communications companies, motor freight carriers, manufacturing companies, consumer research, census methods, hospitals, legal firms, and government agencies, as well as research organizations in universities and in industry. Dr. Deming’s 14 Points and 7 Deadly Diseases continue to help organizations throughout the world focus on the task of transforming to quality processes.

Dr. Genichi Taguchi

Dr. Genichi Taguchi is Executive Director of the American Supplier Institute. For more than 30 years his philosophy of Quality Engineering (Taguchi Methods™ in the U.S.) has been at the forefront of Japanese industry. Introduced in the U.S. in 1982, his methods and techniques for engineering, business and management have helped save millions of dollars in development and warranty costs.

Innovative in his approaches to quality improvement and design, Dr. Taguchi uses a different method to measuring quality – Loss Function. This method establishes a financial measure of the user’s dissatisfaction with a product’s performance as it deviates from a target value.

Dr. Taguchi is widely recognized for his personal innovative leadership, as well as his enhancement and application of the theories and methods of numerous leading quality theorists. He has been awarded the coveted Deming Prize on three occasions for his significant contributions to the field of quality engineering. In addition, Dr. Taguchi received the Blue Ribbon Award from the Emperor of Japan in 1990 for his contribution to industry, and the Shewhart Medal from the American Society of Quality Control in 1996.